Sallie Wagner writes of her days running a trading post with her husband on the Navajo reservation in the 1930s and 1940s.

It took some months for the people to decide that it might be all right to trade with us. The test came when Bent Knee arrived to take a deerskin out of pawn and found that the skin was still in the building. It was the custom, when selling a post, t...

Sallie Wagner writes of her days running a trading post with her husband on the Navajo reservation in the 1930s and 1940s.

When my husband and I bought the trading post, the Navajos in the area were making very poor rugs, the kind that were sold from knocked-together stands along Highway 66. The wool was not well cleaned or well spun. The bordered designs were the kind t...